people and cats
Aug. 23rd, 2025 02:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacB. and I share our home with, of course, two cats, and I wouldn't have it any other way. They're fascinating and adorable if sometimes exasperating creatures who both give and receive love and are a constant source of conversational topics. I never had a cat when I was single - I was away from home too often for it to be fair to an animal - but B. had one when I met her, which was a strong point in her favor as far as I was concerned, and we've been cat-enabled ever since.
So are most of our friends. If they have pets, it's usually cats. Just an occasional dog here and there.
And that's common in society today. I've seen statistics that there are more pet cats than pet dogs in the US. But it didn't use to be that way, not at all.
In my childhood, it seemed that just about every household in the neighborhood had a dog. And those dogs ran loose, and whenever I rode by on my bicycle, or even walked innocently by on the sidewalk, each and every one of those dogs would run up and viciously bark at me at top volume, threatening my life. This was especially frightening if I hadn't seen the brute coming. That alone should be enough to explain my lifelong aversion to dogs. Being constantly under attack by dogs remained the case for me into early adulthood, but somewhere around 30 or 40 years ago people started keeping their dogs locked up.
If there were any other pets in the neighborhood, maybe there was a caged bird or a bowl of goldfish. Never a cat. I cannot recall ever coming across any - until I went to university and started hanging around with SF fans. They had messy and colorful abodes, which nobody in my childhood did, with books and papers scattered around everywhere, and they had cats. I was quickly smitten with these charming animals that did not bark or unprovokedly bite, and knew I was in the right place.
I recently came across written evidence of the unease and discomfort that past society felt for cats. It was in the autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt. When she was a young woman and rather shy, one of her aunts suggested to her "that if I were stuck for conversation I should take the alphabet and start right through it," asking her interlocutor for her opinion on topics beginning with successive letters. For example, C was for cat, and the question was, "Do you have the usual feeling, Mrs. Jellyfish, about cats? Do they give you the creeps even when you do not see them?"
The usual feeling? The creeps? That is a deeply alien world that Eleanor was living in.
So are most of our friends. If they have pets, it's usually cats. Just an occasional dog here and there.
And that's common in society today. I've seen statistics that there are more pet cats than pet dogs in the US. But it didn't use to be that way, not at all.
In my childhood, it seemed that just about every household in the neighborhood had a dog. And those dogs ran loose, and whenever I rode by on my bicycle, or even walked innocently by on the sidewalk, each and every one of those dogs would run up and viciously bark at me at top volume, threatening my life. This was especially frightening if I hadn't seen the brute coming. That alone should be enough to explain my lifelong aversion to dogs. Being constantly under attack by dogs remained the case for me into early adulthood, but somewhere around 30 or 40 years ago people started keeping their dogs locked up.
If there were any other pets in the neighborhood, maybe there was a caged bird or a bowl of goldfish. Never a cat. I cannot recall ever coming across any - until I went to university and started hanging around with SF fans. They had messy and colorful abodes, which nobody in my childhood did, with books and papers scattered around everywhere, and they had cats. I was quickly smitten with these charming animals that did not bark or unprovokedly bite, and knew I was in the right place.
I recently came across written evidence of the unease and discomfort that past society felt for cats. It was in the autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt. When she was a young woman and rather shy, one of her aunts suggested to her "that if I were stuck for conversation I should take the alphabet and start right through it," asking her interlocutor for her opinion on topics beginning with successive letters. For example, C was for cat, and the question was, "Do you have the usual feeling, Mrs. Jellyfish, about cats? Do they give you the creeps even when you do not see them?"
The usual feeling? The creeps? That is a deeply alien world that Eleanor was living in.
no subject
Date: 2025-08-23 06:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-08-23 07:01 pm (UTC)It wouldn't make sense to attempt as a joke something that merely sounds as deeply weird and alien as that cat question does today. No, it's a reflection of a real feeling, even if intended as humorously phrased (which the "Mrs. Jellyfish" already suggests).
no subject
Date: 2025-08-23 07:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-08-23 08:11 pm (UTC)